If I play through a game, get a good experience of a decent length with a cohesive story, what does it matter to me if someone else got to see other stuff because they chose otherwise? That's why I have friends to talk to.

This is one of the best bits, just look at the Life is Strange chat after one of us beats it on here.

This Is The Police - a resource management title, might be the game for Jimbob

Super Bunnyhop put out a really good review for this game. I wouldn't watch much more past the four or five minute mark as he does go pretty in-depth, but it's one I'm going to be checking out I reckon.

Balla is, as ever, utterly wrong. If interactivity is a bad thing we might as well not have narrative in games. Just read a book or watch a film. Player involvement and agency in a story is the primary thing games as a medium can do which nothing else can. It allows us to experience an alternative point of view in a way which is much more real than any passive form of entertainment.

If I play through a game, get a good experience of a decent length with a cohesive story, what does it matter to me if someone else got to see other stuff because they chose otherwise? That's why I have friends to talk to.

Phoenix Wright. Utterly linear, utterly fantastic story. But I'll still mostly read a book if I want a good story, correct, and one of the brilliant things about doing so is that I get to experience all the content without repeating stuff. Not going to pretend I know what 'much more real' means, there's still a screen in the way and I can suddenly wield a sword like I've done so all my life. I suspect it's this 'additional immersion' thing that everyone but me seems to find in videogames.

Fair enough if it doesn't matter to you, but I have the sort of mindset that will seek out every chest in a Zelda dungeon, even the Rupee-containing ones. A completionist's. And I hate missing out on major material. Major material that I might have enjoyed more. The alternative is to wade through stuff I've already experienced, just after I've experienced it. That ain't fun.

OK, serious question... but first let me set the scene. I've not seriously used my Switch for over a week. The last thing I did on it was download Shovel Knight onto Blaster Master Zero.

DIGRESSION ALERT: Stupid game. You press B to confirm a selection, contrary to most setups. So when I select DLC and it takes me out of the game to the Switch menu to get you on the eShop, I press B to confirm that I'm buying this free (at the minute) character as myself... which cancels the whole thing and drops me back into the game. Look forward to reading this again in Last Game I Finished And My Thoughts.

Anyway, the question is this: should I have bought Spla2n? I didn't care for the original much and wouldn't be able to get online all that often.

Last edited by ZeroJones on Thu 10 Aug 2017 - 12:14; edited 1 time in total

Phoenix Wright. Utterly linear, utterly fantastic story. But I'll still mostly read a book if I want a good story, correct, and one of the brilliant things about doing so is that I get to experience all the content without repeating stuff. Not going to pretend I know what 'much more real' means, there's still a screen in the way and I can suddenly wield a sword like I've done so all my life. I suspect it's this 'additional immersion' thing that everyone but me seems to find in videogames.

Fair enough if it doesn't matter to you, but I have the sort of mindset that will seek out every chest in a Zelda dungeon, even the Rupee-containing ones. A completionist's. And I hate missing out on major material. Major material that I might have enjoyed more. The alternative is to wade through stuff I've already experienced, just after I've experienced it. That ain't fun.

With books I'd say its amazing how much I miss when I read them the first time. As in, the same words are there for both readings, but the various linguistic techniques and other nuances that go into fiction and non-fiction often pass me by unless I either read the text again or read/talk about what other people thought of the text in question. I suppose I never really feel like anything can be completed though. Even if a game tells me, 100%, there's still improvements I could make, still different methods I could use. Likewise, even if I've read a Haiku fifty different ways, someone else will have an equally compelling interpretation I've missed. It's that sort of mentality that's rendered collecting everything in a platformer arbitrary to my mind, unless the process of collection is fun enough in the given playthrough.

It's the same with films. The content of Thelma and Louise now, with my thoroughly post-modern outlook on the human mind, is very different to me than the first time I watched it, whereupon I was a modernist. Linear or not lots of art is fluid in the mind's eye of the individual interpreting it given the passage of time. But even without a significant passage of time, there are things I learn upon reading the exact same content again that may potentially utterly transform the experience. My new outlook enables me to enjoy that film significantly more than I did beforehand, even though nothing about the film has changed. There are so few DVD Commentaries that I've listened to, but of those that I have witnessed they too have changed my outlook on various details. Films have that personal reading, alongside the director's reading, the actor's reading, the reading of others and the various different film theories that can be applied to a reading, from Marx to feminism to psychoanalysis.

I dunno, I guess for me there's so many different ways of viewing even a solitary sentence that whether or not a text is interactive or non-interactive does little to change the mastery which I might claim over it. Sure there are things one might miss out on because of the way a non-linear story forces the narrative down separate paths. But there's so much one misses out on even when they go down a single path that I can't understand the fuss.

I see your point, it just doesn't work that way for me. Especially not in gaming. In a linear book I have at least experienced everything there is to experience, and if I haven't experienced it correctly that's my loss. Of course, rare is the game where you can go back and experience any snippet at any time.

That's possibly a fault of gaming, then. Perhaps we should have a system like the chapters of a DVD (or, indeed, a book ), so that you can go back and play certain sections again once you've beaten the game, maybe take a different route on the decisions that shaped your playthrough. Of course, that might be seen by devs as diluting the vision... I'm talking myself out of this now.

Not really contributing much here - I thought I should at least say that I feel the same way as Balla on this; I understand why these games are set up so that people have unique experiences and can discuss them etc., but I'm forever panicking about picking the choice that gives me the "best" gameplay experience. Even when I was playing Secret of Mana, I've had a couple of dialog choices that I've been petrified will "balls up the game".

Jim, you bring up "best" gameplay experience, this is an odd one to me as most of these games that have different choices the gameplay is a second to the story.

Of course, you could play something with choices and have the best ending but should that be the goal of the game, to me I don't mind if I get the worst or best ending, that isn't my goal, I want to play my story and make my choices.

That it something that gaming does that most other mediums don't do and why gaming is my favourite entertainment medium as Jas once said when I reviewed Zelda and Persona 4, would I be better off with watching more films as I do put story up high but it is because of choices and touching subjects films do but you have to go out of your way more.

Jim, you bring up "best" gameplay experience, this is an odd one to me as most of these games that have different choices the gameplay is a second to the story.

Hmmm... I suspect we have different ideas on what things comprise "gameplay" and what things comprise "story". I wasn't really separating the two.If the all that happens is the text in the last dialogue window happens to be different, I just find myself annoyed, as usually in these situations, the "decisions" are often heavy-handed. My real gripe is with like e.g. Fallout, where at a key point of conflict, you're asked to pick a side, knowing the other will absolutely hate you. This then locks you off from entire questlines, gear, locations, and so on. And a lot of those situations are "monkey's paw" ones; you think you're picking the options that's best for the progression of the game. Fallout was the worst for this - spoiler-free, but a key moment in the main questline involves one party having a motive that is completely and utterly illogical, and at no point are you given a sensible option to reconcile; you either have to get your other allies to sign up to the nonsense, or completely destroy that.Less of a problematic example: I loves me Dark Souls, but they throw the occasional choice in, when talking to a character, or the option to use an obscure otherworldly item. This is more towards the argument of carving your own story, but the rest of the game is based around checking every nook and cranny to find everything, so any decision automatically makes you wonder if you've snookered yourself.

Less of a problematic example: I loves me Dark Souls, but they throw the occasional choice in, when talking to a character, or the option to use an obscure otherworldly item. This is more towards the argument of carving your own story, but the rest of the game is based around checking every nook and cranny to find everything, so any decision automatically makes you wonder if you've snookered yourself.

That reminds me about taking a full real life day while I weighed up the decision about giving a certain item to a character in Dark Souls 3, I was so torn of what the outcome may have been if I did or didn't.

Earlier in the month I bought a Ł25 eShop voucher and put it on my 3DS eShop account. This morning, when it came to buying the game I'd bought the credit for, it said I only had 2p. I checked my 3DS eShop account: Ł26.67. When I returned to the Switch, I spotted a 'Merge Funds' option. Given that all the eShop accounts are under the same NNID (is that still what they're called? ), shouldn't that have happened automatically?

I think I might have merged funds already, but the fact that I'm not sure probably says a fair bit...

The_Jaster wrote:

That reminds me about taking a full real life day while I weighed up the decision about giving a certain item to a character in Dark Souls 3, I was so torn of what the outcome may have been if I did or didn't.

I know you luuuuurve the Soulses, but that doesn't sound like a positive to me - correct me if I'm wrong!

I think I might have merged funds already, but the fact that I'm not sure probably says a fair bit...

The_Jaster wrote:

That reminds me about taking a full real life day while I weighed up the decision about giving a certain item to a character in Dark Souls 3, I was so torn of what the outcome may have been if I did or didn't.

I know you luuuuurve the Soulses, but that doesn't sound like a positive to me - correct me if I'm wrong!

No other game has gave me a choice that felt so important to me at that time so it was a big positive, but the beauty of it all is I wasn't stuck there until I made my choice I was free to wander the world with this big decision swirling around in my brain. Not to mention this was my feeling alone as other folk may not have read into it as much as I did or not even found said item.

I think I might have merged funds already, but the fact that I'm not sure probably says a fair bit...

The_Jaster wrote:

That reminds me about taking a full real life day while I weighed up the decision about giving a certain item to a character in Dark Souls 3, I was so torn of what the outcome may have been if I did or didn't.

I know you luuuuurve the Soulses, but that doesn't sound like a positive to me - correct me if I'm wrong!

I had a really similar experience with the ending of Life is Strange, so I'll jump in with my thoughts here.

I'm not wanting to get too far into spoiler territory here, but LiS has a choice at the end of the game - a very difficult choice at that. I spent a solid ten minutes just staring at the screen, putting myself into the character's shoes and weighing up the pros and cons of the choice I was faced with. LiS is a game full of difficult choices but none of them floored me in such a way where I had to stop playing and simply think about the options laid out in front of me. In the end, I made my decision despite the gravity of doing so and watched the ending cutscene play out.

Had I simply been met with the ending cutscene rather than being forced to choose my ending, I don't think the game's ending would have been anywhere near as impactful as it was for me. It would still be the exact same process of events unfolding on screen with the same character plot points unravelling before my eyes but without the ten minute build up of choosing my ending, the depth of the emotion I was experiencing wouldn't be there. Don't get me wrong - linear games can still deliver a hell of an emotional punch, but I'm simply along for the ride. With games that allow you to influence the story, you're in the driver's seat.

I think it all boils down to how much value you place in agency in gaming. To me, it's everything. There's always a degree of agency in games to some extent purely because of the interactivity of the medium, but to me that interactivity is the whole reason I love video games. The more power a developer gives me to shape my own experience, the better. Some games can go too far with allowing a player to shape their own journey and can feel formless and unfocused as a consequence - No Man's Sky comes to mind - but for me, some of the best stories in games are the ones that I've shaped myself.

I had a really similar experience with the ending of Life is Strange, so I'll jump in with my thoughts here.

I get what you're saying, sir - but that's LiS, a game that even I know is all about the stories and the choices. Even I'd want my choices to matter in that! (Which is why I'm not playing it. ) Whereas with Soulsborne I'd find it a hindrance - except Jas has been CAPSLOCKED by his love of Soulsborne so we won't get anything out of him until he's had five cold showers and a beard deep-clean.